Millennials are proven to be the hardest generation of talent to retain at work.

Until the arrival of gamification.

Millennials are known for being autonomous, restless and keen on independence. They are constantly looking for new experiences, even at work. For this generation, working is not just an obligation, nor it is only about money. They are looking for something different: a comprehensive experience through a job that is rewarding but also meaningful.

Moreover, they are not shy when facing challenges or looking for quick results. As we already know, they grew up in the social media era: for them, it’s all about instant gratification.

According to the latest research from Gallup Consulting, millennials currently represent 38% of the US workforce. However, only 29% are fully committed to their work, as the report “How Millennials Want to Work and Live” points out.

With those numbers, we can understand why the term “employee engagement” has taken a completely different meaning. HR experts have begun to see gamification as a way of captivating, motivating and engaging millennials at work.

But what does gamification actually mean? Sebastian Deterding, a specialist in the field focused on researching user experience, video games, persuasive technology and gameful design was one of the first people who coined the term. In his own words, “Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”.

In the last decade, many companies have incorporated different kinds of games in their offices like table tennis, video games, and board games, among others.

But, what would happen if gaming became an intrinsic part of the job? Well, we’ve seen that gamification in a workplace presents many significant advantages, especially in certain fields such as commerce, advertising, marketing, sales, call ceners, etc.

Here are 5 reasons why gamification can help to engage millennials:

1. Makes you feel happy

For the millennial generation, money cannot be the only reward when performing tasks at work. Assuring their well-being and complete professional satisfaction is also extremely important. Several scientific pieces of research demonstrate that gaming causes an increase of dopamine levels in the brain, boosting one’s energy, good mood and productivity.

2. Promotes collaboration

People tend to create strong bonds when playing games. At least, we trust that everyone is going to play according to the rules of the game. Teamwork is an essential force in any organization, and millennials are well aware that significant things are not meant to be achieved alone.

3. Fosters the learning process

Through trial and error, gamers learn to cultivate all kinds of skills. And if there is something that this generation wants, it’s to know 100% what is expected from them and what kinds of things they must learn to be even more successful in the professional field.

4. Motivates self-improvement

Games are also excellent tools to encourage personal growth. Once you have a clear vision of your achievements, the brain instantly activates its reward system. For example, progress bars and leaderboards that showcase the player’s journeys, how far they have come and how far they have left to go push employees to desire an epic win.

5. Helps employees understand the goals of the organization

Last but not least, the strategic use of gamification can improve internal communication within the company, clarifying its short and long-term goals. When millennials understand “the why” of their tasks at work, they are more likely to stay on track and develop desires to advance along their career path.

https://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/pascal-swier-144672.jpg12801920CRMGamifiedhttps://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logo.svgCRMGamified2017-06-12 10:02:202017-06-12 10:02:20Gamification: the best tool to captivate millennials

The Dallas Cowboys hold several sporting honors, including being the only NFL team to record 20 straight winning seasons.

The Cowboys have a robust sales department that had already been using a CRM since 2007 to track and log sales, but they were lacking a reporting tool.

After seeing the way the Hurrah! system’s Big Event alerts worked when sales were recorded, the CRM management team got excited—and knew that if it attracted their attention, it would do the same for their sales reps!

It is well known that monitoring operations based on “Activity and Results” KPI’s is essential for any Call Center or Telemarketing team. In the end, choosing those vital metrics and monitoring them, is what makes them succeed or not.

Some time ago, this important procedure was done poorly with a delay in showing reports, sometimes waiting weeks or even months. Nowadays the cutting edge call centers can monitor their key metrics in real time, allowing faster interaction and instant feedback. This finally streamlines their operations and improves the motivation of the people involved.

A variety of leaderboards and reporting solutions are available in the market, but the ones that actually work are the ones able to show instant updates automatically. Usually they are directly connected to the original data sources: such as CRM Systems, Data Warehouses, Sales Datamarts, Phone Systems, etc.

Non-real time solutions

There are also some solutions (even with a fancy front end) that require in-between files such as Excel spreadsheets or .txt files. We call that type of technology: a “non-real time” solution.

These types of tools are usually much easier to configure and they can start operating in a matter of minutes, however there are some important disadvantages:

1) Someone is required to manually update the Excel/txt files, increasing the risk of mistakes or errors that may lead to unwanted actions… What happen if that person has a day-off at work?

2) It represents an additional non insignificant cost. Let’s suppose the person needs 15 minutes 4 times a day to upload this data. He will be wasting 1 productive hour a day in this particular task. Considering an average cost/time of $30 an hour per person….in a month the investment will be $600, which means $7.200 by year.

3) In Call Centers and Telemarketing, the operations are so intense that measuring the streamline of the business must be done more often. If we use a Monitor/Leaderboard system updated by hand, an employee would have to do this tedious task at least 8 to 10 times a day resulting in personal fatigue and discouragement.

4) Tracking live scores make people feel more excited, no instant feedback is possible using Excel files. We prefer to celebrate specific outstanding actions (or results) at the same moment they occur.For instance if someone calls 50 clients in a week or closes a $50k deal, a REAL TIME solution catches the event and shares the action with everybody at the same moment the person accomplishes the goal.There is a huge difference between having that information LIVE, than waiting 24 hours until the data can be refreshed by someone editing an Excel file. Something similar happens if someone wins 2 or 3 positions in a leaderboard or if someone climbs to the 1st position. People want to see the changes in the metrics and in the leaderboard immediately, right at the moment it happens.

Leaderboard/Reporting Solutions help companies to track KPI’s and make them visible for everybody. They also aid companies to design tournaments and contests among their people invoking an intense sense of competition and self-improvement.

But… which group of Reporting/Leaderboard solutions is less risky and cheaper? Which one represents a more powerful solution to motivate teams?

Those that, even being easier to deploy, require in-between files updated by people? Or those that take the data directly from the source showing it clearly to anyone in the office?

Alejandro Morales
CEO CRMGamified

https://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/mashup-mockup-sin-sony.png20002500CRMGamified Staffhttps://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logo.svgCRMGamified Staff2015-12-07 12:25:452015-12-10 12:51:42Tired of updating leaderboards manually? Welcome to the new era of Real Time Leaderboards!

The history of the Minnesota Timberwolves, an NBA expansion team formed in 1989 is full of great players and impressive accomplishments. They headed to the playoffs 8 consecutive times from 97-2004 and beat Michael Jordan and the Bulls in their heyday.

Their Sales team also has a proud history, setting the league attendance record their first year in existence, drawing more than a million fans.

See how Hurrah! created the same excitement in their offices as on the court!

The Boston Celtics, the most successful NBA franchise with 17 championships – more than any other NBA club – has relied on both its historical legacy and modern technology to achieve sales growth.

The Celtics sales team knew about respecting the trust of the fan
and bonding season ticket holders with the team long-term as a
priority, but measuring sales and encouraging the sales group was another story.

Hurrah! Live in the Boston Celtics Offices

See how Hurrah! became an exciting tool to develop their own sales tournament!

This is what’s been on my mind lately, as I speak with existing and potential clients about the issues they face getting employees to work in CRM.

1.Importance of an Adoption Plan
Along with an Implementation Plan, an Adoption Plan – that is a plan to make sure employees use what has been bought and paid for- is essential, no matter whether you are starting fresh or upgrading. Many organizations simply put everything on hold while they focus on the upgrade process. However, I’ve learned from highly productive Dynamic CRM clients, both plans should be crafted with End Users in mind. By doing so, the project remains focused on how the CRM will support employees in their work and achieve overall company goals. Many times we get lost in the “technology for technology’s sake” weeds.

If you look into the elements of a good Adoption Plan, you will read much about end user motivation and “What’s in it for me?”. Explaining the Good News of CRM may not be enough and it is considered a best practice to explore and incorporate other motivations that may work within the culture of your organization. Some motivations to consider as part of your Adoption Plan are:

Finally, as with any plan, milestones, measurement and ability to adapt quickly will increase the chances of success. Transparency and timeliness of data as spoken about by Satya Nadella at Convergence is everything. Up to the minute reports – pictured below from CRMGamified’s Motivation Engine – easily accessed by all, will allow for decisions to be made immediately. Managers can see what is working, employees can see their progress and improve. Implementing an adoption plan with a motivation engine that measures and shares data as employees work in CRM should add to success for all!

2. More next time on Employee Engagement and what it means to the bottom line. You may consider reading this NYTIMES article “When Employee Engagement turns into Employee Burnout” about how high employee engagement, as it has been traditionally defined, is no longer sufficient to fuel the highest levels of performance

What are the best days and times to close sales? Why shouldn’t you drink coffee in a sales meeting? When having lunch with customers, why should you take the best seat at the table? Why should you never ‘be in a meeting’ when a customer calls? Why do breakfast meetings make rain?

It was great information for me and so I wanted to share just three concrete examples where Mr. Fox’s advice + the use of a CRM platform like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and some gamification techniques, will help you make rain!

1) Always Precall Every Sales Call

As Mr. Fox states, appointments with decision makers are relatively rare events. And yet Meeting with decision makers is crucial to getting the sale. Because of this, meetings (now very commonly held virtually) with decision makers must be carefully planned.

In his book, Mr. Fox says that “Ninety percent of all sales calls are won or lost before the salesperson sees the customer. This is because so few salespeople actually plan their calls…Rainmakers never waste a sales call: they always make a Pre call plan.”

What does that mean in the CRM world? Adopting, adapting and implementing a simple checklist like the book suggests into your CRM. It should be no more than adding some fields to the PhoneCall system entity to help you and your sales team make more effective sales calls and save valuable time for next phone calls.

Example:

Sales Call Objectives

Relevant questions to ask

What am I going to show in this call?

Anticipated customer concerns and objections

Points of differences with competitors

Which dollarization benefits to the customer will I share today?

Expected results and next steps from the call

Expected surprises?

‘A Rainmaker never calls on a decision maker without a written precall plan’, Jeffrey J. Fox.

2) Fish Where the Big Fish Are

It makes no sense to waste your time, money and energy chasing poorly qualified opportunities or low profit deals, aka small fish!

Making good use of CRM can substantially improve your accuracy when qualifying opportunities and best of all, decrease headaches and increase revenue. How can that be accomplished? 3 very simple ideas:

Exploit the new Business Process Flows (BPFs) introduced with CRM 2013 (unfortunately I have seen very few customers using it to its potential). Mandatory “Yes/No” questions aligned with Mr. Fox’s concepts i.e. ‘Current customer?’, ‘Contact is familiar with our products?’, ‘Want or need our products’, ‘contact is decision maker?’, ‘I know about budget’, ‘We are first bidder’, ) combined with options (i.e. timeframe, purchase process) and stage may be very useful. Example:

Leverage Business Rules, also introduced with CRM 2013. Visually display your rules that have been proven successful in qualifying or disqualifying opportunities. By that, I mean proactively alert the sales rep the opportunity doesn’t fit with some proven criteria. For example, if your contact isn’t a decision maker, and you don’t know the budget then a suggested action is to diplomatically skip this one and invest the time in other opportunities.

Start your day with dashboards, not records! Dashboards (customized internally ), can quickly tell you things like: your top opportunities, your top customers, # of opportunities won/lost by customer, $ in revenue by customer, # of phone calls by customer or opportunity, % quota achieved (if combined with CRM goals) besides of course, the most common charts like sales funnel. Work from dashboards and drill down to records, see the forest first, then focus on the right trees.

Celebrate BIG sales! As Mr. Fox states “the big sale is the trophy fish on the wall’, a phrase I couldn’t agree with more!. And I am very happy when customers tell us stories about how much their sales people love to see their picture on the widescreen through Hurrah! Leaderboards after a gong rings or a goal is scored celebrating a BIG SALE!

3) Use the Point System Every Day!

I will re-state the author’s advice here:

‘There are four steps which are part of every sale:

Getting a lead, a referral, an introduction to a decision maker.

Getting an appointment to meet the decision maker.

Meeting the decision maker face-to-face.

Getting a commitment to a close (a purchase) or to an action that directly leads to a close.

Assign one point to Step 1, two points to Step 2, three points to Step 3, and four points to Step 4.”

Of course,the number of points and everyday targets may vary from business to business but gamification of your CRM will allow you to assign points to important business processes and keep everyone focussed and on track.

We at CRMGamified offer tools to award and keep track of points and progress toward well qualified opportunities with great profit and revenue potential. Gamification of your CRM helps you develop rainmakers and increase success for all.

Look how easy it is using Dynamics CRM and our Motivation Engine:

That’s a pretty simple but common rule, including the creation of a record (in this case Lead), that meets some condition or conditions.

Very similar configuration can quickly be done for appointments, phone calls, opportunities and actually whatever system or custom entity you may be using in your Dynamics CRM to track sales data.

Oh! Who is going to make it rain this month? Visually design a badge and define a more difficult rule like generating 10 new opportunities this month with actual revenue >5.000 and closing 2 of them. You may want to include making certain number of phone calls or appointments as well.

Moreover, if you’re in a management role, you may want to know in real time how your sales team is performing, encouraging the behaviors that drive more sales:

While if you are in a sales position aiming to improve your stands, you will love to see how nice your trophies and your next upcoming missions look.

There is a lot more to be done but I hope this post briefly helps to leverage Mr. Fox concepts through a real and fast way of bringing them to action.

Leave your comment below with opinions on how to improve sales performance with Dynamics CRM!

About Us

Founded in 2011, and having presence in the US, Canada and Latin America, CRMGamified® provides modern technology to help companies improve sales and service performance by leveraging gamification.

We offer a metrics-driven approach and CRM add-ons to promote behaviors that lead to substantial revenue growth, increased employee engagement, and improved productivity of outbound teams across the globe.